Sometimes silence is the best thing I can offer.
Silence is an amazing borderless expanse in this sea of noise.
It can carry you through any storm!
They say it is golden…
but I think it’s worth much much more!
It is a most precious fruit on the yoga and meditation tree.
In the midst of accustomed bad feelings about mistakes–shame, embarrassment, fear, worry–these ego-driven machinations we know all too well…
The “mistake” can become a stepping stone, the next step on the path.
You might ask, “Where are you taking me?”
“I wonder what you have in store for me….”
Though certainly an uninvited guest at my table, I try to welcome you. “As we dine together, let’s learn a little from one another and move forward!
You may say I’m a dreamer… but I’m not the only one…
What if the edges of our yoga mat blurred and melted into the world…
and the world became our yoga mat…
the earth our meditation cushion?
How would our lives, and the world, be different?
I used to think I needed to understand.
Now I understand I don’t.
Meditation and yoga help me find some quiet in the midst of confusion.
This somehow gives me peace of mind.
Sometimes fear gets in our way–diminishing our joy and/or thwarting us from reaching our goals.
The moment we can look at our fear head on, we are no longer as afraid, diminishing its power.
No longer feeding it and keeping it alive with our attention and energy, it begins to shimmer and fade like a phantom into nothingness….
As we take poses in yoga, we learn over time great love and respect for this body and for the life force that enlivens, creates, grows, and changes this body.
I am humbled and in awe of this embodied experience.
I am forever grateful.
Yoga, for me, is an act of devotion.
It has me head over heels* crazy in love!
*interestingly, this expression originally was heels over head, as in upside down…
I’ve meditated a lot over the last 42 years with a daily practice.
I am still amazed that every day it can be so different to get eventually to sort of the same place, in a proximal zone.
More quiet… not perfect… but pretty dang good.
It takes me to the vicinity of goodness.
The field from which everything arises…
into which everything subsides…
does not speak….
It listens!
How you want things to be or think they should be can really get in the way of accepting and working with what is.
They can make any attempt a disappointment and even make trying so impossible that you don’t.
Accepting what is and your attempt in the moment as good enough opens us to trying and learning and growth.
Especially unreasonably high expectations can be like that ideal yoga pose that does not exist but can ruin and color our experience making it a sure disappointment.
Joy, on the other hand, flows from an openness to what is, an open-hearted presence that appreciates and celebrates.
My yoga and meditation practices return me again and again to this joy!
Every drop of the ocean is still the ocean.
Such is you and me to the life force, individuals making up the sea of humanity,
all the same ocean.
Separate and one at the same time–the paradox of yoga!
I’ve always been that which I seek.
My yoga and meditation practices reconnect me back to this experience and understanding again and again.
The Every Day Yogi 